Writing for the Hell of It

I've been reading Joshua Clover's 1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About. In my (limited) experience, it's the best thing I've ever read about popular music. Clover is capable of summoning the grand sweep of political contradictions and historical change, but with a poet's ear for an apt phrase, and a poet's eye for the telling detail. 

I mean this literally; he's a published poet. I don't think this is coincidental to my enjoyment of the book. One of the sadder aspects of an advanced degree is the way it tends to kill off the pleasure of writing just as writing. Not in the service of some grand political purpose or martyrish personal struggle within the coils of vaguely sinister profession. Nope, just writing for the hell of it.

I have no idea of what Clover's composition process is like. But for me as a reader, I imagine traces of writing for its own sake. I could make all kinds of arguments about how that's a theoretical impossibility; but I don't think it's a psychological impossibility. To say that a distinction can be deconstructed is not to say the distinction is not important. (To the contrary, it's contingency, uncertainty, and instability is what makes it important.)

In any case, Clover's book has inspired me to get back to writing just for the hell of it.

If you like music, I'd encourage you to give it a gander, especially the central chapters on hip hop, rave culture, and grunge.